Legal Twittering

How about getting served court papers by Twitter. Sounds Awesome, right? Well one court in New Zealand already allows it to happen via facebook, and they're sizing up the 160 character micro-blog site as their next means of screwing you over. I've railed against twitter before to my friends (yes, EIGN writers do actually have friends contrary to popular opinion), but I don't think we've taken up the topic of how Twitter is destroy the minds of the youth (and adults) of the world...

"Yesterday in the High Court, associate Judge David Gendall approved the serving of a court order via Facebook... Judge Glendall’s decision followed a similar move by an Australian judge in December, which saw a mortgage-defaulting couple notified via Facebook that they had lost their home." (nbr.co.nz)

How'd you like that? Login to check if any long lost elementary school girlfriends have written on your wall and you find out you've lost your house. Talk about the biggest Fuck You I can think of. Looks like someone didn't just write on their online wall either.

No More Bird Shit On Your Car - Good News Wednesday XXXVII

Great news for car owners out there who hate the bird shit that consistently piles up on roofs, windows, hoods, heads, etc.... One-third of American birds are endangered, threatened or seriously losing habitat. (discover mag)

Now I won't have to go to the car wash as much.


[Thanks go to eign co-founder pete for finally doing something and sending in this story while he's on the road.]

God We Love The Telegraph: Eat Meat, Go Blind / End Days by 2030.

The telegraph.co.uk has provided us with some great stories over the last year but to come across two this perfect in one day is lucky even for us.

First!
Too much red meat may lead to blindness. I've apparently has eaten way too much red meat in my life, even though I gave it up for 15 months a few years ago. "Researchers have shown that those who consume 10 portions or more a week are nearly 50 per cent more likely to experience deterioration of the retina in old age." ... "In contrast, those who ate chicken at least 3.5 times a week were around 57 per cent less likely to have vision loss than those who ate it 1.5 times a week." (telegraph.co.uk)
Chicken? Really? Fuck chicken! Someone find us a cow!

Second!
Professor John Beddington, the chief scientist of the government of the United Kingdom, said recently that the growing world population is creating a demand on food and liquid resources that we may not be able to sustain after 2030.

"There's not going to be a complete collapse, but things will start getting really worrying if we don't tackle these problems. My main concern is what will happen internationally, there will be food and water shortages." (telegraph.co.uk again)

Awesome. Turns out curing world hunger causes people to live longer... and then they can't be fed. Weird how that works out.

Hollywood and the Large Hadron Collider

We haven't been keeping up with the incoming press releases, or anywhere really, from CERN lately, (note to self: Check fax machine more) and this one isn't anything to write home about, but it bares mention.

Do you know who Tom Hanks is? How about Ayelet Zurer or Ron Howard? They are from Hollywood. And they were visiting the LHC a few months ago to unveil some footage from their upcoming movie "Angels and Demons."

"'The fact that Angels & Demons is a best-selling novel and now a Hollywood movie gives us the opportunity to show how exciting the reality of antimatter research is,' said CERN Research Director Sergio Bertolucci." (cern press release)

No. It's not. The Reality of Anti-Matter Releaserch is Not Exciting. It is terrifying. I know it. Hollywood now knows it. Why can't you open your eyes? Please don't kill us.

Snippets: Free Coffee, Trading Cards, My Bionic Eye

A few brief friday notes:  

*How to make a million bucks in a capitalistic economy. Let customers decide how much to pay for their coffee. Idiots.

*American Idol Trading Cards. Are you FKM (Fucking Kidding Me)? There is nothing else we could possibly say about this.

*Remember the Bionic Eye we've talked about a few times? Well this guy got one, and it sort of works.

Twitter This.

FYI, unlike the rest of the world, you can not find EIGN on Twitter. [Although, maybe that would be a good idea. -ed] But you can now find Rupert Murdoch's Sky News there. They've hired a twitter corespondent to keep you abreast on late breaking news on twitter.

A Seattle paper just folded, but fear not world, you can now get your news in 140 characters or less.

Can anyone else hear society getting dumber by the second?

Believe In God! Lower Your Anxiety -- Good News Wednesday XXXVI

Good news if you're religious. You're probably less anxious than your heathen peers (if you even have any).

"'Religion offers an interpretative framework to understand the world. It lets you know when to act, how to act, and what to do in specific situation,' says Michael Inzlicht, a neuroscientist at the University of Toronto, Scarborough, who led the new study. 'It provides a kind of blueprint on how to interact with the world.'" (newscientist.com)

And based on the world interactions caused by Religion over the last 2000 years, similar blueprints may include the design of the first atomic bomb, the combination of alcohol and automobiles, and the United States public education system.

The article goes on to conclude: "Religious belief offers one thing that sports and politics don't. "I think religion offers the ultimate explanation," Inzlicht says, "for what happens after we leave."

Leave where?

The Little Collider That Could

Because of the "explosion" in September at the LHC we haven't had much in the way of high energy particle physics stories recently. But I came across this little jewel in the washington post today. "The Holy Grail of Physics" talks about the atom smasher Fermi Lab, right here in America's backyard, and about scientists apparent never ending quest to waste money find something important.

Apparently they are getting closer to finding, or not finding, the Higgs boson particle.

"After many years of smashing together protons and anti-protons and searching through the subatomic wreckage, the scientists say they've been able to reduce the range of possible masses of the theoretical Higgs. They are hoping that their collider, the Tevatron, may yet tweeze a Higgs from the flotsam of atomic debris before the Large Hadron Collider, the Europeans' new, balky collider near Geneva, manages to find it." (wapo)

"Europeans' new, balky collider"... Take THAT Europe!

Green Bullets: The Environmentally Friendly Way To Kill Someone

Last May we talked about environmentally friendly bombs. I guess the next logical progression is Eco-friendly, or "green", bullets.

"Three years ago, Phillip Loughlin made a choice he knew would brand him as an outsider with many of his fellow hunters:
He decided to shoot "green" bullets."

Thank God for people like Mr. Loughlin! But wait.... it gets better:

"It made sense," Loughlin said of his switch to more environmentally friendly ammo, which doesn't contain lead. "I believe that we need to do a little bit to take care of the rest of the habitat and the environment -- not just what we want to shoot out of it." (cnn) (my italics)

And let's leave it to the NRA for final thoughts on the subject: Green bullets are a way the "liberal" elite are trying to take guns away from people. God damn it, those guys are fucking idiots. I'm sorry I can't construct a better argument and that I'm just contributing to name-calling and thoughtless insults that the internet is so famous for, but does something like this even justify me wasting any more time trying to come up with a thoughtful, critical and constructive argument about why they are so fucking stupid? Short answer: No. Long answer: no fucking way.

Happy tuesday.

Brief Update- Stem Cell, EDT, Less Girl Scout (Cookies)

We haven't forgotten you. Everyone has just been out of town. One to the great white north, the other to the great white beaches of the carribean and one just checked out in his head. (Sorry about this)

We're back with a few bits of updates from the past few days. And hopefully a more detailed (or, knock-on-wood, funny) post at some point.

*President Obama is in the process as I write this of overturning Bush-the-Great's ban on stem cell research. "President Barack Obama is ending former President George W. Bush's limits on using federal dollars for embryonic stem cell research, with advisers calling the move a clear signal that science — not political ideology — will guide the administration." Sure, science, that's what they all say. It's like statistics, 95 percent of the time you can make them say whatever you want. (ap via sfgate)

*Old man accidentally hits a number of girls selling Girl Scout cookies outside of a grocery store in california. No word if he was pissed about them putting fewer cookies in each box. (sfgate, chicago sun times)

*Daylight Saving Time actually causes an increased amount of energy use. After extending it by a month in 2005, this Bush initiative will probably be repealed by Obama as well. (sciam)

HIV In Monkeys

File this under SCIENTISTS ARE FUCKING CRAZY.

Scientists have made an HIV strain that can infect monkeys. First of all, I thought HIV/AIDS came from monkeys originally. But this sounds a bit cruel. They say it's to try and find a human vaccine, but... really?

"Scientists have created a strain of the human AIDS virus able to infect and multiply in monkeys in a step toward testing future vaccines in monkeys before trying them in people, according to a new study." (reuters)

This just doesn't sound like a great idea. Does anyone think this is actually a good thing?